Friday, January 23, 2009

Guest Pen Cup #4

My pens finally get a day off as we have our first sent in Guest pen cup.

My friend Nrepose and fellow pen junkie over at Unposted was crazy enough to send over 2 pictures of his pen cups for me to review. I love this stuff. Yee Haw, let's get started. The Buddha rocks. Buddha says that "A jug fills drop by drop" I say "A Good Pen cup gets filled one pen at a time. "

It's multi-pen heaven here which tells me we are set for "all purpose" and ready for anything that paper might throw at us. Between the stack of 3x5's and the fountain pen ink, there's enough here to handle any situation. I think I have that blue pen in the front and it looks like a nice gold Cross is poking up from the back.

Macgyver would be proud, these two are are just the icing on the well used cake. A nice selection of Sharpies and the VBall RT would be a "go to" for me. Any parent has to appreciate the fathers day mug and cute feet prints in the frame, what's better than that?

What most important is...zooming in... I don't see a single tooth mark. I know from his Flickr page he has a Phileas, but I don't see it in here. Perhaps there's a 3rd cup floating around that I need to see. Good Pens.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Black


I did a mass Sharpie post here, but realized that of all of those Sharpies, I use this one the most. It's not that I need a permanent ink, I just need a pen that works well when I want it. Generally I use it for doodles, lists and always keep one in my bag. I always have one of these in the car as well. No reason why, it's just always one there.

Click for better views, I am not sure why the actual page views looks worse lately. I am considering a switch to Wordpress, I will give everyone plenty of notice if I do that, but I crave a little more detail and a cleaner look and not sure how to get it here without a total makeover.

No, thank you Sharpie, thanks for creating a pen that I trust and know will work. At the trade show this week, (non pen related) I noticed several vendors were handing out Sharpies as giveaways. That rocks. I have 10,000 crappy ballpoints that I will never use from these shows. (and yes, thanks to the Pen Addict I am putting a package together for Pen for Kids. )

Tomorrow will be my first guest pen cup sent in from another blogger for a review. I cannot wait.
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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Not going to cut it.


So this was what I saw when I checked in to the Hilton this morning. It just looked too clean, too neat, and one ballpoint was not even close to getting the job done.

Ahh, that's better, sorry about the bad quality on the pics and the short post. Back in Boston later today and I will have another post tonight or will just wait to the morning. Oh and yes, that's a gold cross fountain pen that I inked and brought along. In fact I used it the whole flight down. Fresh ink and a little nib work can do wonders. All Good pens.
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Uni-ball Vision Needle Micro (the eyes have it)


Click for Better views. I got this pen from uni-ball and gave it two good weeks of use of solid writing and the bottom line is that the pen is exactly as advertised. Smooth flowing micro point with a waterproof ink. What I notice is that I usually have pen A.D.D. I will grab a pen and then 10 minutes later I have a completely different pen in my hand, but with this one, I have been holding on to it longer than usual.

Fact: In a normal life-span, your eyes will bring you almost 24 million images of the world around you. There's a few from last years flu season I want to erase from my mind, but that's for another day. It's right at a .5 tip and has been working well in my Moleskins and sketchbooks without issues. I think they got this pen right.

In case of emergency, break glass and it wouldn't hurt the pen, they state that the needle is stronger in this version. . Uni-ball is really putting a great lineup of pens together and overall I have been impressed with the quality. I wish I would see a .38 at some point, but that's just me being really picky. Good Pens.
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Monday, January 19, 2009

Empty Shells, G2 to Waterman Rollerball refills

First of all, bear with me, trying to make some changes to clean things up and to get a better format around here. I will get my links and feeds back up as soon as I find something I like. The content should still be OK, just ignore me if I change the curtains every now and then. Now back to the pens.

There are a ton of these floating around my office lately. Empty shells. I hate to throw them away, so they sit in a pile. The reason for it is... that I have a few really nice roller balls that I don't feel like ordering expensive refills for and I am pretty sure I will not like how they write once I get them in the pen anyway. There is no way I am the first to do this, but damn if the guts from a G-2's (and Sarasa's) don't fit right into some of my Watermans without any cutting or adjusting.. Yippee Skippy!

So, a once ignored Waterman shell gets the cheap treatment with a refill from my Sarasa .4. Suddenly I have a pen that looks expensive and writes like a dream and no one is the wiser. I love when a pen can go from a drawer to the desk and stays there.

So if you have a stale pen sitting around, grab your old pens and give it a try. I have a bunch of EARLY (and I mean early) ballpoints that I want to do the same this to, unfortunately, it's not just an even swap but I will keep you updated. See you tomorrow from sunny Florida.
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Moonman AKA The Camry

OK,  Camry MIGHT be a little bit of a stretch comparison.   Low cost and will run forever.  The Moonman M2 is a super fun Chines...